Wolf pulls crab trap, tool use?

November 17, 2025

Photo credit: Heiltsuk First Nation and Kyle Artelle.

A lone female wolf pulls a crab trap out of the water, expertly retrieving a piece of bait hidden inside. Have wolves on the BC West Coast learned to use tools, asked UVic geography researcher, Paul Paquet, in a recent paper published in Ecology and Evolution. 

In a recent interview with Science, "When guardians first started to notice signs of damage on crab traps placed at several locations near Bella Bella, they suspected wolves or bears might be responsible. But some of the traps were hidden in zones of deep water and never exposed, even at low tide. “We were really puzzled,” says Dúqva̓ísla William Housty, who serves as director of the Heiltsuk Integrated Resource Management Department.

Lead author, Kyle Artelle (conservation ecologist at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry) told Science reporter, "he was  was equally baffled. Could sea otters or other marine mammals be responsible? The remote camera footage—captured by University of Alberta master’s student Milène Wiebe and guardian Richard Cody Reid, neither of whom had deployed a remote camera beforehand—came as a total surprise. “Woah,” Artelle recalls thinking. “We were not expecting that.”

Reported in Science, "Scientists have always known wolves were smart, says study co-author Paul Paquet, a University of Victoria (UVic, geography) conservation biologist who has spent decades studying the animals. After all, they are a highly social species that engages in cooperative hunting. But in addition to demonstrating impressive physical dexterity, Paquet says, the crab trap “hijacking” also hints at a higher level of intelligence. The wolf’s actions appear purposeful and efficient, suggesting she understood there was food beneath the water and what steps she needed to access it."